When a massive earthquake struck Haiti in January, 2010, it shone a spotlight on the need to ease the dangerous overcrowding of the capital city of Port-au-Prince. So, after responding to the disaster with emergency programs, Oxfam shifted some of our focus to the countryside. Together with our partners, we ramped up our program to reinvigorate the rice economy of the Artibonite Valley, with the goals of reducing rural poverty, contributing to food security in Haiti, and—by making rice farming more viable—counteracting the continuous pull to migrate from the country to the city. As Oxfam’s Elizabeth Stevens reports in a series of blog posts, Haiti’s rice farmers are embracing the program and making it their own.

Oxfam and our partners have helped restore 4,700 acres of land to cultivation by clearing and repairing irrigation channels. Photo: Anna Fawcus/Oxfam

The muddy water coursing along the roadsides and through the rice fields of the Artibonite Valley plays a prominent role in the lives of rice farmers.  Rivers and channels nourish the rice, the vegetables, the goats and cows, and the riot of greenery in the countryside.  But when storms and hurricanes strike, it’s those same waterways that overflow and carry away livestock, drown the crops, contaminate wells, and deliver deadly cholera bacteria to rural communities.

If the water moves freely through the channels—unimpeded by sediment, weeds, and debris—the risks subside, and the benefits can transform communities, which is why we’ve focused resources on helping farmers clear more than 60 miles of irrigation canals.

Dubuisson is one of the towns where we’ve been working, and I visited there with an Oxfam team last month. Clearing channels isn’t all we’re up to in this area.  We and our partner have  introduced methods of improving rice yields, provided access to low-interest loans, and helped boost the vegetable harvest in the off season for rice. But here what people talked about most was what it’s meant to them to restore irrigation to fields that had gone dry.

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Hurricane Sandy brought flooding to Haiti. Photo: Reuters/Swoan Parker, courtesy the Thomson Reuters Foundation – AlertNet

Sophia Lafontant is Oxfam America’s lead organizer for Haiti.

It is amazing how quickly life can change. In a matter of hours, people in New York’s Breezy Point, The Rockaways and Staten Island, in New Jersey’s Atlantic City, in Cuba, Jamaica, and Haiti were all faced with the reality of lost property, death, and power outages. It makes me realize how interconnected we all are and dependent on our families, friends, elected officials, and the kindness of strangers to help us when we cannot help ourselves.

I live in Washington, D.C., and while Sandy came through here too, it was not with the same force.  While holed up in my apartment for the better part of two days, my mind and thoughts often raced to Haiti, where 54 people reportedly died in the storm, and my extended family and friends still there. Both my parents were born and raised on the island and came to the US as young adults to escape the repressive government of Jean Claude Duvalier. Like many children of immigrant parents, I was raised with one foot in the US and one foot in Haiti. Despite the extreme differences, I love both countries dearly. As an American, I cherish the opportunities and freedoms I have had all my life living here. But Haiti, the land of my parents’ birth, pulls at my heart strings constantly. And the storm, in an odd way, brought into focus for me the sudden similarities in these neighboring nations: the anxiety, fear, loss, suffering, and high-level discussions about if and how to rebuild. Read the rest of this entry »

Watching Alison Klayman’s fascinating new documentary, “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” all I could think about was how Ai Weiwei’s life was transformed by a disaster.

Like many of his countrymen, the Chinese artist and provocateur was stunned by the death toll from the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Among the quake’s 70,000 victims were about 5,000 students, many of whom died in the collapse of poorly constructed government-built schools.

When the Chinese government refuses to release information about the student victims, Weiwei transforms himself from bystander to activist. He travels to Sichuan to interview families about the lost and missing. He papers the walls of art galleries with lists of victims’ names and ages. And through it all, he tweets and blogs constantly, using the Internet to launch a grassroots movement in China and beyond. (In a clever filmmaking twist, Weiwei’s actual tweets serve as a narrative device, commenting on the action as it unfolds.)

Ai Weiwei’s vases on display in Tokyo. Photo: Anna Kramer

As his efforts attract more notice, Weiwei pays a price for his dogged refusal to keep quiet. The documentary cameras capture his beating by police and subsequent head injury, the destruction of his art studio, and later, his disappearance and arrest. Yet Weiwei is no martyr. He remains a very human protagonist throughout: flawed, funny, charismatic, and—despite his assertions to the contrary—amazingly brave.

I wanted to see “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” because I’m a huge fan of Weiwei as an artist. During a visit to Tokyo in 2009, I happened to attend his first global exhibit, “According to What” (coincidentally also highlighted in the film). I loved the playful defiance of his work, like the thousand-year-old Chinese vases dipped in gaudy colored paint, pictured at right.

But I didn’t realize that Weiwei had so much in common with the people and organizations we work with here at Oxfam. Like them, he believes that ordinary people can actually change the world. He believes that speaking out against injustice is the right thing to do, even if it means putting yourself at risk. And he believes that natural events like earthquakes shouldn’t have to be disasters on a human scale, especially for the poor and vulnerable among us.

That’s why, more than a portrait of an artist, “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” is also a story about the power of those beliefs—and required viewing for anyone who shares them.

OxfamBuzzList is a new blog series about the movies, books, blogs, TV shows, music, and more that have Oxfam staff and supporters talking. Please leave a comment, or offer us your own contribution (400 words or less). E-mail Andrea Perera, Oxfam America’s Web Editor, at aperera@oxfamamerica.org.

Sophia Lafontant is Oxfam America’s lead Haiti organizer, working on policy and advocacy issues with the Haitian diaspora. In her first post about Haiti—hours after the earthquake—she recounted her profound worry as she tried desperately to learn the fate of family members still living in the country.

Before my 25^th birthday, I hadn’t been to Haiti since I was a girl in the 1980s. My parents were among the second wave of Haitians that left the country in the decade prior and once the Duvalier regime fell there was enough uncertainty that Haiti became an all but distant memory for them. But I held on to my fond and vivid memories of growing up in my grandmother’s house on Avenue Christophe, in the heart of Port-au-Prince, a few blocks away from the famous Olfoson Hotel which counted Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Mick Jagger as some of its famed international guests during its heyday.

Sophia Lafontant, right, worked with Jacqueline Morette, a farmer and head of an Oxfam partner organization in Haiti.

While I lived in Boston, MA, I always had a foot in Haiti. Like most children of the diaspora, I felt the need to embrace both places. In the summer of 2007, I embarked on my first trip back to Haiti: it had been on my mind and it was time to return to the place I now scarcely remembered. I will never forget the blast of heat that rushed over me when we touched down; it was like someone was holding a blow dryer to my face.

It’s difficult to explain why, but Haiti instantly felt like home. The familiar foods, music, language filled with allusions and metaphors, the stream of relatives and family friends that trickle in throughout the day to greet and welcome me; the constant color everywhere—on tap taps, sides of buildings, street art and of course the brightly painted houses. It all beckoned me–with so much beauty it’s hard not to smile still.

A friend once asked me what makes Haiti so different from other Caribbean countries. I paused to think about what answer I would give. My response was “the struggle.” The long struggle. Haiti has had more than its share of pain and tragedy. Whether it’s the subjugation and indignation of slavery, 32 coups in its history, harsh and crippling international sanctions and policies, and tense relations with its neighbor, the Dominican Republic, and seemingly endless battles with mother nature, Haitians miraculously dig deep to find an inner strength that escapes most of us. And it is that spirit and determination to make a way out of no way that I find beautiful and admire so much.

It’s been two years since the devastating earthquake. Despite the inactions or action of those in power, Haitians will continue to pull money together to pay their children’s school fees, continue to ensure that their uniforms are pressed and clean, and continue to hope that tomorrow is better than today. It is that seemingly bottomless well of hope that keeps me at my computer late into the evening some nights. It’s what keeps me on conference calls with allies and cranking out organizing plans. All minuscule in the grand scheme of things, and none of which can be credited with saving lives or adding to the meager incomes of the millions of Haitians that live on two bucks a day.

Still, it’s the very least I can do for a nation that has given me so much—so much laughter, color, and so much love.

Last month I met a young man named Sady Civil in Port-au-Prince at a camp called Delmas 3 where he is an assistant public health promoter. His job is to teach people the importance of good hygiene as a means to avoid major disease outbreaks, which can kill just as many people as any earthquake.

When he first arrived, there were about 7,000 people living in Delmas 3. “It was very dirty, there were feces everywhere,” he says, walking along the main road next to the camp. On the day we visited workers were digging several large pits to install 16 new permanent latrines. This would make roughly one latrine for every 110 camp residents, still not enough, but an improvement.

“It’s a lot cleaner here now,” Civil says. “We’ve seen a lot of good changes.” Read the rest of this entry »

It took me all year, but I finally made it to Haiti earlier this month. It’s a fascinating and beautiful country facing some daunting challenges, and it was an honor for me to participate in Oxfam’s response to the earthquake and the cholera epidemic.

The best moments of the trip were meeting with entrepreneurs rebuilding their businesses right out of the rubble of their homes and their lives. We met one woman named Carole who runs a small shop in the Carrefour Feuilles district in Port-au-Prince out of a small shipping container on the ruins of her home. She painted it pink on the inside. “I just like pink,” she says. She now lives in what used to be a warehouse next door. The roof leaks so much, when it rains, she says, “it’s like being outside.”

“Oxfam is the only one who came here,” she says. We gave her the shipping container, set it up on her land, and helped her with a grant to stock it with drinks, toilet paper, matches, and canned goods. “It put joy in my heart,” she says, “If it weren’t for this container, I don’t know when I would be on my feet…” Now, she says, “I’m on my way.”
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I recently came across a quote from one of my favorite photographers, Minor White, who said, “At first glance a photograph can inform us. At second glance it can reach us.”

My job is to organize and catalogue Oxfam’s photography from Haiti and other disaster-affected areas. That’s why I wanted to highlight a few recent images from Haiti—all by Ami Vitale—that are worth a second glance.  Six months after the devastating earthquake, they illuminate Haitians’ efforts to rebuild and recover.

Photo: Ami Vitale / Oxfam America

Jeanot Dossus works on a bag. Photo by Jane Beesley/Oxfam

Dealing with household waste in the camps for people left homeless by the earthquake that hit Haiti in January can be a big problem. Oxfam’s public health teams are working with locals on ways to manage it, including with children who are doing some creative recycling. Oxfam’s Jane Beesley, a photographer and story-gatherer, reports how in one camp, a young participant has taken that creativity to a whole new level.

Recently I gave a talk about Oxfam’s work in Haiti. It was the fourth or fifth I’ve done since returning to the UK. Among the many stories was one that seems to capture everyone’s attention—the story of Jeanot Dossus, a 15-year-old boy in Don Bosco camp. The public health tent there was filled with children absorbed in a variety of activities. In the middle of the tent sat Jeanot, totally focused on what he was doing. With meticulous care, he was folding strips of cardboard wrapped with pieces from empty crisp packets then weaving them into what is obviously a bag–a glorious green basket-weave bag. Read the rest of this entry »

Oxfam teamed up with a local kite maker to help children create and launch hundreds of kites bearing public- health messages. Photo: Julia Gilbert / Oxfam

In Oxfam’s Haiti photo collection from the last six months – in among pictures of tent camps, water trucks, and survivors picking up the pieces of their lives – there are some scenes that look like fun: children building toys and painting pictures, grownups hamming it up on a makeshift stage, and rows of brightly colored kites.

This is the playful work of Oxfam’s public health promoters, whose job it is to help people adapt to the hygiene needs of the crowded camps, where the threat of disease epidemics is ever-present. So the child-crafted paintings, the kites that leap and dive above the rubble of the camps, and the actors entertaining their young audiences all carry messages about staying clean to stay healthy.  So far, Oxfam’s health-education messages have reached more than 200,000 people, and in post-earthquake Haiti – so far – there have been no serious outbreaks of disease.  So, long live the kites.  Or in Haitian Kreyol: Viv – yo cerf volants!

Check out more photos of public health workers in action:

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Sophia Lafontant recently visited family members in Haiti.

A sea of tents, blue everywhere, greeted Sophia Lafontant when she arrived in Haiti a few weeks ago. The longing she had to see the two grandmothers there with whom she shares a close bond—“I wanted to hold them, to have conversations with them,” she said—had grown to an ache in the endless months since the January 12 earthquake ravaged the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Lafontant is a senior organizer and training specialist at Oxfam America where she works on the CHANGE Initiative, a student leadership and advocacy program. She also works with the Oxfam Action Corp, a program for community organizers. In August, Lafontant will become the lead organizer for Haiti based in Washington, D.C. And she’s worn other hats in the five years she’s been with the organization—but not the ones that would have allowed her swift entry into a disaster zone.

But she finally made it in June for a reunion with family members  that was both joyous and sobering.

“It rained every single day while I was in Haiti,” Lafontant said. “I could only imagine living in a tent under those circumstances.” Read the rest of this entry »